prep the base
I’ve had to recreate the first three steps of this; I usually do them (which vary tons) on the original cap before resizing and cropping, and I didn’t have any idea of what I had done here, so you’ll see that the cap is a bit different, and so is the result (but it doesn’t really change in the icon afterwards, so I’m gonna stick with the old one on later steps.

So here is what I did:


Original cap / copied layer on screen 50%
copied layer on soft light 90%, desaturated (ctrl+u)/ selective colouring (red/yellow)
Then I sharpened twice, and pasted on a new canvas where I resized to this:


Original base / recreated base.

one
So, let’s go into the actual icon process. I wanted to play with the shadows and lights because it was obviously very plain still. So, I added some textures; made sure to pick some that had some ~textured feeling~ to it too. So I took both of these from arabella @faded.

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Set on multiply (77%) / Set on screen (7%) And I added curves to bring back the light (RBG – up in the middle)
so it goes like this:
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two
Now it was time to bring back the colours. So I added a vibrance layer (100%) and played with the yellows on a selective colouring layer (lowering everything and upping the magenta’s)

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And since the shadows were lost, I copy&merged everything (ctrl + alt + shift + e), blurred it, desaturated (I do this A LOT) and set on soft light. I also added a gradient (from black to #cdc571) and set it on soft light to bring back the yellows.
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Now we add an “exposure” (correct me if it isn’t called like that in English) layer, where I changed exposure to +0.07 and gamma to 1.21. So now we’ve got this:



Added a default b&w gradient map and lowered the opacity to 25%, and another selective colouring layer, now on the reds (cyan -100, yellow +100)

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Gradient map / colouring layer

three
The blacks were too black now, and the textured feeling I had gotten at first wasn’t that important anymore, so... let’s add more textures !! And since it’s not unusual that I get stuck in one maker’s texture folder, once again, these are arabella's

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texture #1 on screen (29%) / texture #2 on soft light (45%)

Then I went and added a curves layer, where I basically played around with all colours and it looks like this. More vibrance and more selective colouring.

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Curves / Vibrance (42) / Selective colouring (greens -> cyan -30, magenta&yellow +100)

Next I added another texture, this time by likealight, set it on screen (14%) and masked away all over his face.

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Then:
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Added more curves (rgb), more vibrance (40%) and a levels layer (14,1.16,255).

four
So now, there was an empty feel about it... so BRING ON THE TEXT.
INTRO, size 6.5 (caps), separation between lines: 9pt, separation between letters: 100. Changed the colours to fit the icon, rasterized and pretty sure I blurred (Gaussian) at 0.3

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*black background added so it was easier to see here

I then added the next texture, also by likealight and set it on screen at 8%. IDK I TEND TO DO THE WHOLE PUT THINGS YOU ONLY NOTICE IF YOU REALLY SQUINT. As I did with the gradient map I added next and set on 5%.

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five BLOCKING.
So here is the thing, it comes the time where the icon seems finished but I DONT LIKE IT. So I’m not sure what came first, the turning it into b&w or trying to block it, but the thing is... I did both in the end.
So basically copy/merged everything –except text- and started moving around. I ended up with two layers.

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Pushed down. / And turned upside down, pushed up, and masked
And since it felt way too dark again, added another curves layer, and


TA DA! C’est fini ;D Anyway, Hope this was somehow useful :DD
If you have a question, pelase ask :D